High energy femtosecond supercontinuum light generation in large mode area photonic crystal fiber

A large mode area photonic crystal fiber (LMA PCF) with an effective area of 180 mu rn(2) is used to generate a high energy, micro-joule range, flat, octave spanning supercontinuum (SC) extending from similar to 600 nm to similar to 1720 nm. A train of femtosecond pulses from a widely-tunable parametric amplifier pumped by a Ti: Sapphire regenerative amplifier system are coupled into a 20 cm length of LMA PCF generating a SC of 1.4 mu J energy. We present an experimental study of the high energy SC as a function of the input power and the pumping wavelength. The spectrum obtained at a pump wavelength of 1260 nm presents spectral flatness variation less than 12 dB over more than 1.1 octave bandwidth. The physical processes behind the SC formation are described in the normal and the anomalous dispersion regions. Our experimental results are successfully compared with the numerical solution of the nonlinear Schrodinger equation. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.